


Blankets and ice cream

by Laramie



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5352371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/pseuds/Laramie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-s6. Prompted by todowntononanimpala.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blankets and ice cream

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: depression, depression-related eating problems, oblique reference to Thomas’s suicide attempt.

When Jimmy gets back from work, Thomas is still lying on the sofa where he has been sleeping. This is not an uncommon occurrence, but it still sets a flare of pain in his heart. He treads across the carpet of his Sheffield flat and kneels by Thomas's head. His eyes are open, which is something at least, but they stare unseeingly across the room and only refocus on Jimmy slowly.

"Bad day?" Jimmy mumbles, reaching out to brush Thomas's black fringe out of his eyes. He has always been uncomfortable around sadness. He hates the way it steals away the warmth in someone's eyes until they're cold and flat. He hates the way it makes _him_ feel. At the moment, his anger at how Thomas has been treated protects him from despair; but he's afraid of what will happen when his rage burns out if Thomas is still like this.

Thomas nods in response to Jimmy's question. "Have ya come home for lunch?" he rasps, pulling his blanket up to his neck to protect from the cool rush of air as Jimmy had entered. It's only September, and already the weather seems to be turning.

Jimmy frowns. "It's half-five. I've finished work."

He has lost half a day. Well. It's half a day less to live through. "Oh."

"Have you eaten anything?"

Casting his mind back sluggishly through the flat greyness, Thomas remembers a slice of toast, but that might have been yesterday. "Don't think so."

"I'll make you somethin'," Jimmy says, getting to his feet with the aid of the arm of the sofa, relieved to have something useful he can do.

"Not hungry." His voice is dull, like the rest of him.

Jimmy rocks out his uncertainty on the balls of his feet, stuffing his hands into his trouser pockets. "Bangers 'n' mash, or somethin'," he suggests.

Turning his face into the pillow, Thomas shakes his head. It's all just too _hard_. He just wants to lie here until he fades away into greyness and stops bringing Jimmy down. Jimmy rescued him - Jimmy gave him a place to go after he had been dragged from death - and he doesn't deserve Thomas's sadness. He's already using Jimmy's flat, Jimmy's sofa, Jimmy's goodwill. While Thomas tries to become one with the sofa, Jimmy's out working. He's in his new life with his new friends and probably growing sick of Thomas's gloomy presence.

A scraping noise close by cuts into Thomas's thoughts; he looks up to see Jimmy holding a bowl out to him. It must have been the spoon against the bowl that had made the noise.

"Here," Jimmy says gently, and Thomas drags his arms out of the blanket to take it.

The crockery is cold and hard against his fingers, the sensation making him shiver a little. When he looks inside it, he sees three big curls of chocolate ice cream, den-like from the way Jimmy scooped them from the pot. Laboriously, Thomas pushes himself up to sit upright, setting his feet on the floor and adjusting the blanket to cover him again.

Jimmy joins him on the sofa, sitting comfortably close, their non-dominant arms touching from shoulder to elbow. Taking up the spoon, Thomas scrapes a little bit of ice cream onto it and transfers it to his mouth, letting it melt slowly as he holds it on his tongue. As he continues eating, with Jimmy by his side doing the same, the chill sweetness causes a paradoxical bloom of warmth.

They eat in silence, the clanking of spoon against bowl the only sound in the room. It's unusual for Jimmy not to have the wireless on; Thomas supposes he'll put it on later. Here, with Jimmy, Thomas at last feels that he's allowed to be small, that he's allowed to be sad, even as he tries to hide the extent of the blackness in his chest, head, entire body.

Thomas looks at Jimmy, licks melted ice cream from his lips. Jimmy doesn't look round to start with, so Thomas just admires his profile, the sight of him causing pleasure-pain as his heart tries to constrict and expand in the same moment. It's a feeling that Thomas has been intimately familiar with ever since that one night he kissed Jimmy. "I can't believe you're doin' this for me."

Now Jimmy does look round, meeting Thomas's eyes seriously for long enough to show Thomas that he knows what Thomas meant. Then he smiles softly. "It's just ice cream. You're very welcome to it. Truthfully, you're doing me a favour."

"I am?"

"Well. I'd never get through it on my own, would I?"

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not 100% sure whether they would be likely to have home-frozen ice cream available in 1925 but I decided to just go with it. It could always be a mod AU, I suppose.


End file.
